


smoke and mirrors

by layton_kyouju



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: 3.06 spoilers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, hc where the last ep was faked by the characters to hide their plans, they are stubborn and dumb and I want them to take care of each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 16:36:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layton_kyouju/pseuds/layton_kyouju
Summary: Decisions made before “decisions made.”





	smoke and mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> so..... how about that fucking terrible ending, eh?
> 
> I stand by the headcanon that alex and strand used the podcast platform to mislead warren and his crew, and then they saved the world.

“This is so fucked up.”

Static, pouring through her flesh, boiling in her head and stomach. Days had passed since that video chat with Nic, when her mind went reeling at something that could not be real. Neurons firing, burning, scouring for a possible explanation for any of this. _It can’t be real._

But it’s right there before her eyes, behind her eyes, replaying over and over in an endless loop. Denial was pointless.

Alex felt the sofa cushions shift as Strand leaned back from where he hunched over her laptop. “I agree,” came a deep, exhausted grumble in reply. “As far as I can tell, it’s not doctored. It’s,” he paused, “something.”

The reporter dragged her hand down her face and squinted. Far too bright, too fuzzy. So goddamn tired. “I’m not sure if I wanted to hear that or not at this point.” Her throat felt like she had swallowed a cup of grit and sand, not the bitter coffee steaming from the mug clutched on her lap.

Her host’s form slumped at the other end of the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose between a thumb and index finger. Under the shadow of his hand Alex could still make out haggard gray bruising circling beneath his eyes. Papers and disemboweled VHS cases cascaded over the coffee table the laptop perched on, the couch, and the hardwood floor of the rather bare living room in chaotic stacks.

Strand had watched the video over so many times, analytical blue scanning each grainy frame. The dark, contorted shape looming in the corner. Or was it all just apophenia? A matrixing in the low resolution and poor lighting to look like a figure. Alex’s mind betraying her, _looking_ for something in that darkness.

Alex couldn’t bear the sight of it anymore. It made her skin writhe. Some cultist in her bedroom, late at night, filming her at her most vulnerable with their creepy, gangling friend who may or may not be there watching from the shadows.

The idea made bile rise in her throat.

Thoughts began to collide into each other, fighting to piece together how all this happened. Well, she _knew_ how all this happened, but it also felt detached. As if it were happening to someone else. Like it had been going on all along, but her eyes had been sealed shut until now.

“I was just curious. I wanted to learn about some spooky shit on some tapes and then move on with my life,” she rambled on to herself. Speaking aloud helped in some vague way, allowed her to process by hearing the words outside her own restlessness. “But _no_ , it all had to lead to ancient death cults in the guise of powerful corporations and children being groomed to bring on a demonic, musical apocalypse that would drown the world in darkness.”

Her glower and an outstretched finger snapped to Richard, who flinched back with wide eyes. “And don’t you _dare_ say there’s no apocalypse coming. Regardless of if there really is, these people are doing some _messed up shit_.”

Strand’s expression calmed to one of solemn contemplation. He looked back to the computer screen, that _thing_ frozen in time on the paused video. “Yes, this has reached a new extreme.”

Lariats of stress coiling in Alex’s chest went lax; the doctor’s voice often had that effect. She released a heavy, shuddering breath and let herself sink against the couch with a distant hope that it would swallow her. “I’ll say. Things have taken a big jump from creepy mp3 attachments on emails to breaking into my apartment to record me sleeping.”

She readjusted, tilting her gaze to her company. “Plus there’s that voice message you got.” Richard stiffened. There was no need to be specific. “I can’t imagine the process of trying to fake that.”

The only response the man gave was a brusque clearing of his throat. He still appeared shaken by it. A voice that had been long buried under soil and repression, or so he thought. Spiraling back to that awful night in the woods, the terrified eyes of a child flickering over dancing shadows, staring until tears poured down from his eyes. The smell of crisp burning wood, wet earth, and ash.

Alex could relate. Blind terror was an emotion she had grown accustomed to over the past two years. All things considered, that was not ideal. She pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead, where a near constant migraine had been ruminating for days. “What do we do,” she muttered, more of a query for the universe than something she expected an answer to.

As always, Strand gave an unbidden reply, whether it was wanted or not. “I have no idea.”

The journalist’s face scrunched in confusion. “We’re so _close_ ,” she countered. Her fingers reached out, grasping in the open air for something she could not see. “Everything is right there!”

“We’re _too_ close,” Strand corrected. He mustered a stern glare before it gave way to exhaustion and slouched shoulders. “They know everything. They’ve always been ahead of us in some form since the very beginning, even before all this. Leading us on.” He raked a hand through his tussled hair, flashes of dull brown and silvery gray. “It’s obvious they no longer care about subtlety. If anything, they seem to enjoy watching us squirm.”

If she wasn’t feeling dismal enough already about their hellish predicament, Alex could depend on Strand’s “realism” to make any semblance of hope shatter to pieces. Thanks, Richie, ever the ray of sunshine.

He was correct, though. The two of them were lab rats racing through a winding maze in a desperate hunt, but Warren and his cohorts were the scientists. Watching, observing. Omnipotent directors aware of the locations of every key, looking on in amusement as their victims floundered. One well placed mouse trap near the finish line would end it all.

But what if their sight were taken from them. The monitors from which they watched the scampering rodents wiped black or set just askew enough to disorient and muddle.

Misdirection.

A spark jolted through Alex’s brain. Her heart thundered against her ribs, pulse thrumming in her fingertips. She took a sip of her coffee to relieve her dry tongue. It didn’t help the shaking.

“What if we use that against them?”

It was Richard’s turn to have a quizzical expression cross over his wearied features as he met Alex’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

She hesitated for a second, chewing her lips. A voice like a snake’s hiss tickled at the edge of her mind; it’s a ridiculous idea. Her sleep deprived mind did not have a track record for success, and this would be no different. He’ll shut it down before she knows what hit her.

Despite the self doubt, Alex pushed forward. “What if we use the podcast to our advantage. They’ve been listening to it since the start, right? Tracking our progress.” Strand nodded. “So, what if the information we put out,” she gave a slight grimace, worry clawing into her gut, “stretched the truth a bit.”

Richard was silent for a beat, unimpressed. “You want to intentionally lie on your podcast,” he stated, monotone and dry. “That’s something I never thought I would hear you say.”

An irritated huff left Alex’s nose. “Not really _lie_ , just,” she juggled her hands, searching for the proper terms, “misguide?” It left a foul taste in her mouth. When she went into this line of work she wanted to be honest and bring knowledge into the light of day for her listeners. She owed them that much for trusting her to give them the unabashed truth.

Some journalist she turned out to be.

Her confidence in the idea was plummeting, leaving her wrung out, but she couldn’t let the words fester and die in her chest. “If we play it right, it may be enough to distract them. It could buy us a chance to gain the upper hand and figure out our next steps.”

The longer the silence stretched on, the more Alex hoped this coffee was poisoned by their malevolent stalkers and that she would drop dead at any moment. As if she would be so lucky.

Strand’s bearded chin sat cupped in his palm, a finger tapping a thoughtful rhythm on his cheek. “Interesting,” he mumbled. Startled, Alex sat up, eyes wide at the positive response. Richard gave her a sidelong glance. “What about your show?”

What little optimism remained came crashing down in a forlorn mass of rubble. “Right,” she breathed, retreating back into herself. “I don’t know. Continuing it would defeat the purpose of staying below Warren and the Order’s radar. It would put the investigation and so many people at risk despite how much I want to share it.”

“If I recall, you _did_ want to be Ira Glass, not Scooby Doo,” he said with the ghost of a wry smirk.

A somber smile pulled at Alex’s lips, but it didn’t keep the sting from her eyes. “My career is screwed at this point, anyway.”

It hurt saying it aloud, relenting to the facts, a needle piercing into her heart. Everyone at PNWS was sympathetic, excessively so, but she had to be realistic. Everything was shattered. “Who’s going to listen to a journalist who documented her spiral into sleep deprivation, broken ethics, and paranoia? I can’t imagine yours is on much better legs.”

Strand’s brow creased in offense for a moment, but it crumpled under the power of that truth. It seemed the only sponsors he had gotten as of late were puppets of Daiva Corp. Suspicious as they come. “You’re not wrong,” he admitted with a sigh.

The corner of Alex’s mouth twitched upward, but it wavered as a blanket of melancholy swathed around her. “We bear some of the fault in this, so it’s our responsibility to try and fix it.”

“We’ll also be walking into a trap,” the doctor added, his voice sharp and curt. “They know we’ve discovered Geneva’s significance in their plans, and all that’s left to do is wait for us to take the bait.”

Alex shrugged. “Depending on how you look at it, the worst case scenario is we’re killed either at the hands of an omnipresent cult that is bent on bringing forth a demonic apocalypse or by said demonic apocalypse.”

A detached giddiness filled her ribs, ripping a laugh from her tightening lungs. Erratic pounding through her veins. “What’s left to be afraid of anymore? This is going to end in a nightmare either way, and I have plenty of experience with those!“

The wide grin she gave Strand faltered at the alarmed concern lining his wrinkled forehead.

Heavy, the pressure on her shoulders forcing her down. Knocking the wind out of her, leaving her an empty shell. “Oh, _Jesus_ ,” her voice cracked, twisted by a sob. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the whimpers building up her throat, fighting to break free with the raw burning behind her eyes.

Darkness creeping in. Stretched, towering shadows close in around her, too long limbs with too long fingers. Jagged, crooked like tree branches scratching a pale sky. Pressing on her chest, cracking ribs, crumbling heart, popping lungs. Blood black as ink pouring down from her nose, copper spreading through her mouth. She chokes through the viscous fluid and metallic stench.

 _A lE x_ , the shadows chant, their ragged edges boring through her. _a LE X AL ExA l e X a_ **_Le xAL E x A l E X_ ** —

“ _Alex!_ ” a familiar voice cut into the darkness and echoes. Soft encouragements to breathe, the ceramic weight in her hands snatched away, a gentle but firm hold on her arm to keep her steady. She fights the primordial urge to keep gasping in the suffocating void.

A cough wracked through the reporter’s small frame. Her diaphragm gave into the exhale and sucked in another starving gulp of air. It still hiccuped as she followed Richard’s instructions to breathe in, hold, breathe out, but the work proved easier with each repeated cycle. Focus of patterns to guide her back from the precipice.

Soon the shadows took their leave, slinking back to just outside her vision as the panic melted away. Pain remained in its wake, raw, clinging in her throat and chest like mold. She put a quaking hand to her sternum, felt her heart buffeting in its crimson jail of tissue and bone.

“Are you all right?” came Strand’s voice from where he hovered over her, an uncharacteristic worry breaking through his even tone. Alex couldn’t pull her gaze from the threadbare rug beneath her sneakers. “Do you need me to, er, get you anything? Water?”

She shook her head, tresses of hair brushing over her cheeks. “Just gotta calm down,” she rasped between heavy puffs.

A hush. Doubt rolled off Richard in cuffs, something Alex had developed a sense for as time passed, but he kept it from his tongue. “All right,” he relented. Two light pats on her shoulder, stiff and awkward, but they’re still a comfort. His hand pulled back and returned to his knee.

Shuddering breaths and sniffles filled the quiet, disheveled living room, but Alex’s internal mire of thoughts was a different story. Embarrassment, frustration, shame coiling and swelling within her. Humiliation over having a panic attack, and a panic attack in front of _Strand_ , no less. Dr. I-Fear-Nothing with his illustrious PhDs in Everything-Has-a-Scientific-Explanation and If-You-Think-Otherwise-You’re-an-Idiot.

She _really_ wished that coffee was poisoned.

“I’m so sorry.”

Alex tensed for an instant, but those three words in a drained mumble were what she needed to halt the accelerating path of self destruction. She scrubbed away tears that had spilled down her cheeks during the bout of terror with her sleeve. “Yeah. Me too.”

After a short while Alex’s hands were steady enough to take her mug from where Richard placed it on the coffee table. Her eyes met the dark form still mounted on her laptop screen in the haze of gray fuzz, and a surge of dread made its return.

“This could all end in the same way as with Maddie Franks and Keith Dabic,” she said.

Grotesque, viceral, merciless.

The thick, coarse scent of rot and blood repulsing every fiber of her being. The mechanical hum of countless flies around the dangling corpse, limp and lifeless. The photograph that was so unassuming, like that of a tourist in a new land, but the eyes were _wrong_ , not his. The washed out pallor, pale flesh puckering just below the hairline.

“That’s a valid concern,” Strand replied, his staunch manner restored. His guest turned her head to look at him, incredulity washing over her face. His frown deepened, a blaze sparking in his eyes. “I have to find the truth, Alex. My entire existence has revolved around these questions. I can’t live with not knowing, and they have,” he trailed off, pausing to collect himself. His expression softened. “I need to go.”

Alex held his stare before releasing a deep breath and glancing into her lukewarm coffee. “I understand, and that’s why I’m still going with you.”

A pause. “Excuse me?”

She met his stare in retaliation. “Some of my choices may be ill advised, but I’ll be damned if I’m not seeing all this shit through to the end.” Too many sleepless nights, too much labor toward figuring out how the pieces of this absurd puzzle fit together. Hell, she was scared out of her mind, but she never let fear stop her before. “I think I’d be damned either way, to be honest.”

His gaze flitted over her face in a frantic search. “You’re not kidding.”

“Nope.”

“What about your family? Your friends?”

Alex stumbled at that. She had grown so consumed by her work that most family interaction had been limited to phone calls and friendships stayed in the confines of the recording studios. Remorse sat like lead in her stomach. “I think I would feel better knowing I did the best I could to keep them safe.”

Strand went quiet. Pain and guilt flickered behind his glasses for a brief moment, but grey storm clouds churned in the resonant blue. He turned to the floor. Alex would see it as a rare victory if he didn’t look so hurt.

“I anticipated something like this would happen,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough murmur. “I didn’t know how or when, but I knew it was inevitable.” He braced his elbows on his knees and interlocked his fingers as he followed the rug’s worn fibers. “That’s why I went to see Charlie; I didn’t want to go headlong into my possible end without telling her the truth and being sure she would be safe.”

Quivering thumbs wringing over each other, picking at tooth-shorn nails. “That and spend as much time with her as I could. The last thing I wanted was to drag more innocents into this mess.”

A twitch of his eye toward Alex as “innocents” passed his lips made the journalist prickle. Oh, no, he was not going to shove everything onto himself. She had a share in the fault as well. “Eleven phone calls, Richard,” she snipped. “That would have been followed by eleven more, and another eleven after that. You know first hand that I am fucking relentless.”

Exasperation greeted her in a vexed sneer as Strand turned to face her. “But this isn’t about _you._  You could be—”

Her hand shot up, halting his words. “But it _is_. You said so yourself; I’m at the center of this with you. All that stuff about trust is a two way street!” The words grew wet and heavy as they sprang from her mouth. Renewed burning welled in her eyes, but every thread of her being strained to overcome the mounting pain. “You may be an infuriating, miserable skeptic of an old man whom I’ve wanted to punch in the face more than once, but I’m not letting you go through this alone.”

Clenching fist, white knuckled but not very threatening in its size or strength. “And if the Order wants to use you as some sacrificial key thing to bring on the end of days, they’ll have to go through me!”

He just stared back at her. No pain, no irritation, no smug arrogance. Blank.

Alex relaxed her fist, let her shoulders fall. He wasn’t resisting or arguing a counterpoint, so that must have meant something.

It made her uneasy.

Strand had been so grounded in his convictions since the beginning. He had taken down anything he claimed impossible with no hesitation or regret. One would have to pry his faith in logic and the scientific method from his cold, dead hands.

As more information on his life bubbled to the surface, however, so did a side of Richard that Alex had not seen before.

Doubt.

Doubt in every aspect of his existence, its foundation crumbling to dust. He had lost everything. Now that pain was being used against him, held hostage to bend and manipulate him like a broken puppet. With his assurance torn away, he had been rendered vulnerable and weak.

She hated what these people had done to them down to her bone marrow. The fact that she could not yet comprehend _why_ and _how_ was like a splash of gasoline into an open fire.

Had all of this been some elaborate compilation of coincidences and gaslighting? Or were demons a reality and all they believed about the universe would be torn asunder?

Or was there something even deeper and darker past the web’s veiling expanse, reaching and reaching to no end?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Alex dropped her hand and held it in the air between them. She did her best to muster a grin. “So, Dr. Strand, would you do me the honor of going to hell in a handbasket with me?”

Richard looked down at the offering, then met her gaze.

He smiled.

It wasn’t the knowing smirk of a man who was the sole holder of some secret knowledge, one that Alex had seen a thousand times over the past couple years. It was small, soft. Warm. Carrying an air of gratitude and more than a hint of sadness that pulled the crows feet around his eyes.

His larger hand enveloped Alex’s fingers.

“It would be my pleasure, Ms. Reagan.”


End file.
